


Wayfarers

by ClaraxBarton



Series: Thank you fics [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Civil War fix it, Clint has the flu, Cuddling, Established Relationship, Idiots in Love, M/M, Protective Bucky Barnes, Sickfic, winterhawk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 14:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20658947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton
Summary: Clint Barton is grumpy.Bucky is determined.That's it.That's the fic.





	Wayfarers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bear_shark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bear_shark/gifts).

> For Bear_shark, who wanted Bucky taking care of some grumpy Clint. I hope you feel better soon darling and thank you so very much!

  
  
  


The thing about being Natasha’s friend was that it was terrifying.

_ She _ was terrifying, sure.

But a reciprocal relationship with her that wasn’t that of enemies, but instead of friends, meant that there was every chance of disappointing her.

And Bucky had disappointed enough people for two lifetimes. Three lifetimes. However many he was up to these days, in any case.

So, when Natasha asked/informed/commanded Bucky to check in on Clint, Bucky didn’t even try to come up with an excuse to get out of doing it.

Which, of course, was a mistake.

Mistakes, however, were Bucky’s bread and butter these days. Ever since Steve and Stark had tracked him down in Bucharest and saved him from being killed by a UN strike team or executed by the new king of Wakanda, T’Challa, Bucky felt like all he had done was make one mistake after another.

He had ended up going to Wakanda, in any case - but instead of as a prisoner, as a patient. And immediately made the mistake of abandoning Steve by requesting that Shuri and T’Challa put him back into cryo until they could get the triggers out of his brain. Apparently, this was tantamount to abandoning Steve - again - and after three months in cryo and six months of living in Stark Tower tiptoeing, Bucky and Steve were finally  _ almost _ fixing things between them.

Bucky routinely made an ass of himself in public and private. The triggers had been pulled from his head, and Shuri had connected Bucky with a truly phenomenal network of therapists, but he wasn’t cured, wasn’t miraculously the Bucky who had never gone to war or never been held as a prisoner of war or made into an assassin. So he startled at noises, at flashes of light, at strangers; his temper was nearly as short as Steve’s these days, and retreat was almost always Bucky’s reaction to  _ everything _ .

Mistakes involving Clint Barton were the ones Bucky was most familiar with, these days.

Going back all the way to day one in the Tower, when Bucky had accepted a cup of coffee from Steve that turned out to be the  _ last _ cup of coffee in the pot - a pot that Steve did not restart - and thus Clint had been left without caffeine and absolutely no will to play nice with Bucky.

The mistakes had varied, after that. From walking in on each other during panic attacks to insulting the Mets - and how the fuck was Bucky supposed to know Clint loved the Mets? And  _ why _ the fuck did  _ anyone _ love the Mets? - to trading blowjobs at extremely inappropriate times.

Not that Bucky was under the impression there was an  _ appropriate _ time to give Clint Barton a blowjob. Clint Barton was a human, was a functioning member of society who used his very specific, very dangerous skill set to save people, and wasn’t terrified every second of every day that his brainwashing went deeper than anyone could ever suspect, wasn’t plagued with nightmares of killing his best friend. Clint deserved someone a hell of a lot…  _ more _ than Bucky.

But Bucky was also a selfish asshole, and if Clint was dumb enough to give him the time of day - and he wasn’t dumb at all, not even a little, and wasn’t that a hell of a thing, but he was, despite everything, too soft-hearted - Bucky wasn’t going to make the  _ collosal _ mistake of saying no.

Natasha, though, wasn’t asking Bucky to go over to Clint’s Bed-Stuy apartment and give him a hand job or anything. 

She was asking Bucky to check on him because Natasha, Sam, Tony, Wanda and Steve were off to India to rebuild a dam, and Clint was struck from the active Avengers roster because he had the  _ flu _ .

And because there was no one else she trusted to look after him, and Clint was her Steve, her strong-willed, good-hearted blond-haired superhero who didn’t know how to back down.

Bucky made two stops before he got into a cab to go to Brooklyn. He still wasn’t comfortable riding the train - there was too much risk associated with an enclosed space and that many trapped civilians. 

First, he went to Duane Reed and grabbed just about every kind of cold, flu and allergy medication he could get his hands on. A handful of paperback books, a few bottles of Gatorade, cans of broth and bottles of Pedialyte rounded out  _ that _ stop.

His second stop was the  _ Avengers _ merch store at Penn Station.

He bought two hoodies in Clint’s size - one featuring the ‘new’ Black Widow logo that Stark’s PR people were workshopping, and the second a purple and black Hawkeye hoodie. Bucky had stolen his other one, and Bucky and Clint were both of the mindset that it was impossible to have too many hoodies.

Loaded down with a duffel bag of supplies, Bucky hailed a cab and settled in for a half-hour ride through terrible traffic.

He hadn’t seen Clint for a few days - not since the last Avengers mission debrief, when Clint had lingered afterwards and invited himself up to Bucky’s room in Steve’s apartment, and they had fooled around for nearly two hours before Bucky remembered he had a therapy appointment that he was in very real danger of missing. That had been eight days ago.

According to Natasha, Clint had been down with the flu for two days now.

Bucky wasn’t entirely sure what that would mean, for the situation he was walking into.

A century ago, when Steve had had the flu, he’d been near death, and Bucky had held him close and tried to keep him warm and cool by turns, and threatened a god he didn’t believe in with horrible vengeance if Steve was taken from him.

He didn’t think this was going to be like that.

Clint wasn’t a ninety-pound asthmatic with a bad heart, a litany of lung ailments, and with only the medical care and technology of the Depression available to him.

Instead, Clint was healthy - apart from this and his propensity to get  _ shot _ \- and he wasn’t living in a tenement in Brooklyn in a harsh winter, in an apartment with a busted radiator and one working light.

Bucky spent the entire drive trying to convince himself of that - that Clint wasn’t Steve, and that, in any case,  _ Steve _ had survived. So Clint… Clint was going to be fine. He would be.

By the time the cab pulled to a stop in front of the apartment building that Clint owned - and Bucky  _ still _ couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that  _ Clint Barton owned an apartment building _ \- Bucky had completely failed to convince himself that things were going to be okay.

He paid the driver, grabbed the duffel, and made his way up to Clint’s apartment.

Natasha had provided him with a key - had assured him that Clint didn’t have the place rigged to kill intruders, in any case - and Bucky was forced to use the key when Clint didn’t answer his door knocking.

Stepping inside the apartment, Bucky had to grimace.

It smelled like the trash hadn’t been taken out in a few days, smelled like the coffee pot had been left on the burner and the liquid had been reduced down to tar, smelled like stale air and misery.

Bucky had to count to ten and force himself not to freak out.

And immediately felt like a fucking idiot for being so nearly overwhelmed by this. It was the messy apartment of a sick man, and  _ not _ a dead or dying one, and things were going to be  _ fine. _

He set the duffel bag down on the kitchen counter and decided to look for Clint before he tackled… whatever he needed to tackle.

Clint was upstairs, tangled in two different colored sheets and what looked like four different throw blankets. He was wearing a pair of loose boxers that Bucky recognized as being  _ his _ and no shirt. His hair was an absolute mess - no surprise there, seeing as how it always was - and his eyes were scrunched close and his face etched in misery.

Bucky’s heart did a weird twisting thing in his chest, but he ignored it and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Clint.” 

The other man didn’t stir at all, didn’t even react to the sound of his name or the presence of a threat in his vicinity.

That had Bucky frowning and hesitantly reaching for him.

“Clint,” he repeated, a little louder and a little sharper. He put a hand on Clint’s shoulder, touch light, ready to pull back.

But instead of snapping awake and wrestling him into restraint, Clint’s eyes remained closed and he just weakly batted Bucky’s hand away.

“Go ‘way,” he grumbled, and tried to roll over.

The pile of blankets impeded his efforts and he kicked his legs.

Bucky sighed and moved to adjust them, found it impossible to straighten them out, and ended up just pulling all of the linens from the bed.

“Noooo,” Clint whined, and blindly groped for something to cover himself up with.

He finally blinked his eyes open and saw Bucky.

“Babe?”

Bucky’s stupid heart did that thing again. Clint had never called him that before.

“‘S nice dream,” Clint’s features softened from a scowl into an almost smile. “C’mere.” He held out his right arm towards Bucky.

Bucky let out a sigh of relief. Clint might be half delirious - or more than half - but if he was trying to get laid, he at least wasn’t on death’s door. 

“Gotta take care of you,” Bucky said, and set about draping the sheets and blankets back over Clint.

“Lemme take care of  _ you _ ,” Clint argued, and Bucky laughed.

“You have the flu, Clint.”

That had the blond-haired man scowling and, as if his body was keen on reminding him of that fact, Clint curled in on himself and started to cough.

He sounded awful, and he was definitely without kleenex or water or  _ anything _ .

With a sigh, Bucky left Clint and went back downstairs to start soup and get Clint some water, medicine and tissues.

He even managed to pry the coffee pot off of the burner and filled it with dish soap and warm water, hoping it would loosen up the tarry sludge at the bottom.

By the time he went back upstairs with the medicine and water, Clint was asleep.

Bucky once again sat beside him on the bed and went through the same efforts to wake him up.

“You didn’t leave me,” Clint said this time.

Bucky rolled his eyes.

“I went to get you water and cough syrup.”

“Why?” Clint asked, looking at Bucky in utter confusion.

“Because you’re sick.”

Clint continued to stare at him, a frown drawing together his eyebrows, his full lips turned down at the corners.

“Clint-”

But Clint reached for the little plastic cup of orange syrup and tossed it back, and then grabbed the glass of water from Bucky’s hands and chugged it down.

“I can manage on my own,” Clint insisted, putting both the plastic cup and empty glass down on the nightstand. 

“Clearly,” Bucky raised both his eyebrows.

Clint glared at him.

“‘M fine. Just. Thanks for the medicine. I’m good now. You can go.” He rolled over, giving Bucky his back, and pulled the sheets and blankets up to his chin.

Bucky stared at the stubborn curve of Clint’s back for a long moment, but then sighed.

He got to his feet and went back downstairs. He rolled up his sleeves and got to work cleaning.

-o-

He let Clint sleep for another half-hour before he brought up soup, more water, Gatorade and the hoodies.

He dropped the clothes on the bed, unsurprised when that didn’t earn much of a reaction from Clint, and set the food and beverages on the now-crowded nightstand.

Once again, he sat down on the bed.

“Clint.”

The man in bed frowned, rolled his head to the side, and squinted open one eye.

“Why’re you here?” Clint groaned. His voice sounded just as bad as before, rough and nasally, and he looked like hell.

“I’m taking care of you,” Bucky repeated. Clint continued to stare at him, and Bucky shrugged and offered up a wry grin. “Natalia asked me to.”

Clint huffed, a sound between a laugh and a cough, and then started actually coughing.

Bucky rubbed his back, the same gentle, soothing circles he had done with Steve decades ago.

“Tell her I’m  _ fine _ ,” Clint insisted when his coughing fit had passed.

“Yeah. Sure you are.”

Clint glared at him, and Bucky glared back.

“You realize you aren’t the first stubborn asshole I’ve taken care of despite being told I wasn’t needed, right?”

Clint sighed, and the fight seemed to momentarily melt out of him.

“Right. Little Steve Rogers, ready to take on Hitler but stuck with pneumonia until he got all scienced up.”

“Yep. And since I don’t see that happening to you anytime soon, you’re stuck with me taking care of you.”

A complicated series of emotions chased across Clint’s face, but instead of saying anything, he just pushed himself into a sitting position on shaky arms.

“Soup,” Bucky pointed at the bowl. “Just chicken broth,” he added when Clint made a face. “You need it. And there’s Gatorade if you want, but also water.”

Clint nodded, still looking sulky, but then his gaze traveled to the foot of the bed and the tangled hoodies.

“What’re those?” he asked.

Bucky reached for them.

“Hoodies. Thought you might want something to keep you warm, and figured you probably hadn’t done laundry.”

Clint opened his mouth, maybe to protest, but Bucky’s smirk silenced him before he even had the chance.

“Yeah. I guess I could use one,” Clint grumbled.

“Black Widow or Hawkeye?” Bucky asked.

Clint glared at him.

“Don’t care,” he muttered, and then coughed again.

Once he had subsided, Bucky passed him the Hawkeye hoodie.

“Put this on, and then let’s get some soup in you,” he said.

Clint pulled the hoodie on, looking pathetic and weak and  _ adorable _ as he struggled to get his head through the neck opening. Bucky’s heart was, once again, doing that thing.

Bucky picked up the bowl and dipped the spoon into it.

“You’re not seriously going to  _ feed _ me?” Clint asked in disbelief.

“Sure am.”

Bucky held out the spoon and waited for Clint to open his mouth. He eased the spoon inside and waited for Clint to slurp up the soup before he pulled it out.

They were halfway through the bowl, and Clint was still tense and glaring and off, but he finally spoke up between spoonfuls.

“You know I’m not gonna be able to suck your dick with my throat feeling like I swallowed ground-up razor blades.”

It was a definite change from Clint’s initial greeting, his half-asleep attempt to get Bucky into bed with him, and Bucky had to wonder what the hell Clint’s problem was.

“I get it, okay? We have fun and you’re stuck at the Tower so Tasha sent you over to make sure I’m not dead but… nobody expects you to do this shit.”

Bucky set the bowl down on the nightstand and sighed.

“Why are the pretty ones always so fucking dense?” he grumbled.

“Excuse me?” Clint looked like he was gearing himself up for an argument, which was more than a little hilarious considered his red-rimmed eyes, puffy nose and cheeks, and seriously fucked-up hair. Bucky had had a lot of experience dishelving Clint’s hair, but even after their most enthusiastic… mistakes, Clint had never looked quite this rough.

“I don’t give a fuck what anyone expects from me. I go to a lot of therapy sessions to  _ remind _ me how to not care about people’s expectations. And Natalia is your friend, and yes, wanted to make sure you weren’t dead, but she also wanted to make sure you were taken care of. And I  _ wanted _ to take care of you.”

“Wanted?” Clint repeated, still combative.

“Want,” Bucky said firmly. “I want to take care of you, Clint. You’re my friend, and you’re my…”

“Fuck buddy?”

Bucky’s lips twisted.

“I was gonna say best guy, but that’s not… Boyfriend?” Bucky ran a hand through his hair in irritation. “ You’re my whatever you want to be. If that’s a fuck buddy, fine.”

Clint stared at him, eyes a little hazy with fever.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about  _ you _ ,” Bucky growled. “And me. And us.”

“Why? Why the fuck do you want there to be an  _ us _ ? I’m a fucking mess! Bucky, I’m… For fuck’s sake, I am an actual dumpster fire.”

“Bullshit.”

“I am! I’m barely fucking holding my lfie together! I haven’t had an actual romantic relationship with anyone in five years, and  _ that _ one ended in flaming disaster, and you- Bucky, you gotta know how much better than me you deserve.”

They stared at each other for a long time, long enough for Clint to start coughing again - a horrible, hacking sound that had both of them grimacing and Bucky handing over tissues while Clint kind of fell over sideways on the bed.

Bucky adjusted himself on the bed and pulled Clint against him, so that he wasn’t totally flat on the bed but also wasn’t having to support too much of his own weight.

Whether the coughing fit had just really taken it out of him or Clint was just giving up the fight, he relaxed against Bucky and let Bucky wrap his arms around him and card his fingers through his disaster hair.

“You think I’m not good enough for America’s fifth favorite Avenger?” Bucky asked.

Clint snorted, coughed, and gave Bucky a weak punch to the stomach.

He didn’t say anything, though, and his breathing turned regular, tension gone from his body and weight settled.

Bucky figured he must have fallen asleep again, but then Clint spoke up.

“Don’t wanna be fuck buddies.”

“Okay. We can… stop,” Bucky said, although it turned his stomach to even say it.

Clint’s right arm came up to wrap around Bucky’s waist.

“Wanna be your best guy,” he murmured.

Bucky laughed and pressed a kiss to Clint’s forehead.

“Already are, sweetheart.”

-o-

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I am, as always, indebted to Ro for fixing the fixes and cheering the cheers. You're the best.


End file.
